Sunday, January 16, 2011

Right around Thanksgiving, my trusty desktop computer fried a motherboard. After cleaning up a few viruses, my tech installed the old hard drive in a new used machine. After half a day spent installing all my software, I was up and running. No data was lost and I was able to recover about 5 years worth of emails and correspondence. That lasted about 10 days.

The new used machine slowed dramatically and then refused to boot. Another trip to the computer shop. My tech found a nasty virus; one he was sure that hid itself in my old hard drive. After carefully scanning all my data from the old hard drive, it was transferred to a new, larger drive along with different virus protection. Another half day was spent reinstalling all my software and a new external hard drive for backup. At this point, all my data and correspondence is still intact. Whew!

Everything was fine until 1/11/11. I'm sure you all have experienced the "joy" of having your home page changed, your search engine hijacked and rogue software installing itself on your machine. It's not pleasant, and does not contribute to productivity. Even worse, the cure for this attack cost me in the form of lost data. For some reason, my backup included only my archive of emails. As a result, I've lost the most recent 12 months of emails. That is the reason for this post. I'm not looking for pity.

Plenty of readers have emailed over the years with questions about items posted here on Appraiser Active. We've done our best to correspond help out when possible, and check back to see how things are going. With the loss of those emails, I'm in the dark.

If you have emailed me with a question, concern, or suggestion, I would appreciate hearing from you again. If I have not responded to something sent my way in the last month, it's most likely because the email has been lost. Please send it one more time.

francois @ tampabay.rr.com (just remove the spaces)

With a healthy computer I hope to catch up on work and post some REAL news soon.

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About Me

Licensed in Real Estate since 1976, Frank is a second generation REALTOR®, Broker and Appraiser. In addition to his Real Estate Brokers License, he is a State-Certified Residential Appraiser and Appraisal Instructor.

As a member of the Board of Directors of the Florida Association of REALTORS and the National Association of REALTORS, he has been involved in FAR and NAR Appraisal and Public Policy related committees since 1992.Frank is past Chairman and a current member of the National Association of REALTORS® Appraisal Committee.

Frank was appointed by Governor Jeb Bush to the Florida Real Estate Appraisal Board in February, 2000 and served eight years, four as Chairman. During his service as a member of the Florida Real Estate Appraisal Board, he represented Florida on the Appraisal Foundation State Regulator Advisory Group and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Appraiser Regulatory Officials.

In addition to providing Expert Witness services in Administrative Hearings, Florida and Federal Courts, Frank is often quoted by local and nationally syndicated real estate columnists and appears as a speaker on appraisal and mortgage related topics.Articles by Frank have been published in the REALTOR® Magazine, the Journal of Property Economics and his blog, Appraiser Active.

As president of Gregoire & Gregoire, Inc., a Residential Real Estate Appraisal firm based in St. Petersburg, Frank is active valuation and consulting for a wide variety of clients.